Dear Readers,
Good afternoon-ish, and welcome to Off The Fence, the link-loaded companion piece to our link-free print magazine, where we spend all weekend scouring the internet and pumping the phones to bring you a cost-free satchel of deep-dives, featurettes, tips and gossip.
In between the best Superbowl show ever, paying tribute at the court of St Valentine and worrying about the impending likelihood of World War Three, we’ve found time to put together another cracker.
Andrew Agonistes
Veteran journalist Michael Gillard continues to run pieces on his Substack that are quite unlike anything being put to print elsewhere. His latest investigation concerns the case of the straight-shooting Pizza Prince and the Earl of Rosslyn, who was commander of the royal protection unit from 2001 to 2013, and as such, holds the keys to Andrew’s alibis in his upcoming civil case with Virginia Roberts. Was Andrew really at a suburban chain restaurant on the 10 March 2001? As Private Eye’s ‘Flunkey’ reports, the Palace holds immaculate records of the daily comings and goings of all the members of the Royal Family. But they regard the archive as a private, family affair. How long this tradition will be upheld – with a trial looming in a Manhattan courthouse – remains to be seen.
Shuffle Off This Mortal Coyle
Henry Dyer is an excellent man, journalist and a long-standing friend to The Fence. So, we were deeply saddened to learn that he was the victim of a grim racist slur from a Labour MP, who has since had the whip removed.
Please do read Henry’s statement that he put out on the subject, a text of careful, powerful judgement. But you should also check out this piece he wrote for us in 2020 on which of the Tory donors rung up Boris Johnson to secure the grouse moor exemption for COVID regulations. Yes, that was a thing that happened. And what happened to Henry was appalling, and all too commonplace in the beery, idle Palace of Westminster.
Unreal City
Earlier this month, Marie Le Conte wondered why, in 2022, it’s near-impossible to have a decent late-night meal in central London. For it wasn’t always like this. Dusting down Jerry White’s London in the 20th Century – an absolute classic if you haven’t had the pleasure – one learns that in the Edwardian era ‘Restaurants usually stayed open an hour longer till 1.30am, and 11.30pm was a common late supping hour. In general, Londoners kept later hours before the First World War than any time up to the 1990s, if then’. Of course, when this book was published in 2001, the lack of quality twilight sustenance was mitigated by the capital’s superb clubbing scene, with The End – just by Tottenham Court Road – playing music until nine in the morning. Nowadays, you have to trek all the way to Hackney Wick – or thereabouts – if you want to have a proper dance.
The View from the Hudson
Sam Knight is an extremely well-regarded writer, but his latest piece for the New Yorker – a rather flattering profile of Cressida Dick – was not well-judged (to put it mildly). It’s no secret that Condé Nast and the NYT are trying to hoover up international digital subscribers, and are offering more British coverage by British writers to encourage this process – but when said coverage is written by journalists with plainly no expertise in that field then the result is embarrassing for everyone concerned.
A Pair of Proper Coppers
Here’s another factoid courtesy of Jerry White. London’s two most prolific serial killers of the 20th century – John Christie and Dennis Nilsen – were both police officers in the capital before they began their respective murderous rampages.
Vital, Stunning, Necessary
You’ve all seen those exuberant quotes on the cover of a hyped new book, and like us, you may have perhaps regarded the process with something of a cynical air. How do all these famous writers find the time to read so much new stuff? So we tasked Mike Jakeman to dig into the blurbocracy, and you can read his investigation here. We’re also very interested in the mechanics of #bookstagram, but according to our publishing insiders, nowadays, it’s all about #BookTok. And now we feel old.
The Hinge Factor
In a piece that has been shared among the more discerning gossip newsletters, Juno Kelly writes of her tenure on Raya, the world’s most ‘exclusive’ dating app. It’s a very, very funny article, and you can read it for free here.
Do Your Thing
For Issue 11, we have commissioned one, two, three, FOUR investigations, which is great news for our readers and our lawyers. But we do need people to subscribe to the print magazine – the only significant revenue stream available to us – in order to keep expanding the project as costs increase. We are going to keep publishing articles online, and this newsletter will remain free-to-air. In the meantime, if you’ve been enjoying what we’ve been doing here, please do support us today at the lowly cost of £25 for the year.
Zouma Fatigue
You have, we presume, already heard about the Premier League’s predominant scandal at the moment: West Ham’s French centre-half, Kurt Zouma, being filmed assaulting and harming his cat, to almost no retribution from the Champions League-chasing club. When the video first began to circulate, West Ham put out a statement saying that Zouma had been fined £250,000 as punishment for bringing the club’s name into disrepute, to be donated to ‘animal welfare charities’. Furthermore, they stated that the player had committed to attending an animal welfare course provided by the RSPCA, who had already stepped in to rescue his cats from further harm. The charity, however, have since denied that West Ham have made any contact whatsoever with them, and rebutted suggestions of a donation or the offer of a welfare course.
It would be easy for us to write a screed of anger towards Zouma, David Moyes, and West Ham’s notoriously unpleasant owners – after all, there is something of a Cat Cabal here at Fence HQ, with both editor and deputy editor avowedly pro-feline. But you don’t need to be reading that. There’s enough unpleasantness in the world. Instead, here’s JunJun – a Japanese cat with nearly 100x our Instagram followers – being tucked under a blanket.
In Case You Missed It
Curiously ignored by much of the UK’s print media, The New York Times and Serial’s 8-part investigation into 2014’s Trojan Horse Letter, really is as fascinating as everyone else is saying.
Will Unwin tells the frankly extraordinary story of Galatasaray’s Omar Elabdellaoui, blinded by a firework 13 months ago, and now returning to football.
It’s a big shout to end any restaurant review with a literal ‘and then everyone clapped and cheered’ but, goshdarnit, Jay Rayner pulls it off with his charming review of Wandsworth Rd caribbean cafe, Sugarcane.
Joe ‘Kingpin’ Grand hacks a crypto wallet in one of the most nail-bitingly satisfying YouTube videos of the last few weeks.
Sasha Abramsky talks about the rage and radicalisation that’s landed in Sequim, Washington, The Town That QAnon Nearly Swallowed
In one of the funniest pieces we’ve read all year, Joe Dunthorne explores whether imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery in Real Me and Fake Me.
And Finally
Say what you want about the writhing tentacles of the American Empire (many have), but theirs is a state that knows how to enact profound humiliation. They put a McDonalds in Moscow; they drove Saddam to pursue the joys of underground living solutions; and after subduing Osama bin Laden, proceeded to open source his hard drive so everyone could discover his love of pornography and Final Fantasy VII. The fate they left for Emperor Hirohito, however, might be their most tortuous.
It wasn’t enough to obliterate his country in the denouement of the Second World War, nor was it enough to spare his life on the condition that he renounced not only his crown but his claim to divinity, in the insultingly-termed ‘Humanity Declaration’. No: in 1975, the State Department elected to take Hirohito and his wife on a tour of Disneyland, where he was gifted a watch by none other than Mickey Mouse himself. Hilariously, footage survives, although unfortunately it does not show us whether or not the former Emperor got to go on Space Mountain.
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That’s all for this week. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we observe the rest of this most chivalrous of holidays. Mind you, good manners are expensive and we will be living off beans on toast until payday to atone for our largesse. So, if you would like to ensure that we don’t limp on penniless for the rest of February, we have a handsome little quarterly you can subscribe to at the link below. Treat yourself, or treat your partner, with four issues of Britain’s most exciting newish magazine. After all, the M&S at Waterloo station is all out of flowers and chocolate by now, and it’s way too late to put champagne in the fridge.
As ever, if you have any thoughts, passing or pressing, that you would like to share with the editorial team, reply to this email and we will all receive it simultaneously. Five emails for the price of one!
All the best, and Happy Valentine’s Day,
TF
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